One Johannesburg congregation is bringing a little slice of America to Africa. Percy Zvomuya goes to church
When I visited My Father’s House in Melville I expected a fiery church similar to those described by American writer James Baldwin in the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain or his play, The Amen Corner.
I can be forgiven for my wayward expectations. After all, there are similarities. Robert Kelley, the founding pastor of the church, was born in Washington DC and a substantial number of the congregation are American.
A couple of the congregants were involved in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign on the continent. Courtney Priester, a deacon at the church, is president of Democrats Abroad South Africa.
I went on the morning of March 22, the weekend of Human Rights Day. Among the congregants was Danisa Baloyi, once a board member of Fidentia, the financial services company that misappropriated hundreds of millions of rand of money invested by widows and orphans. Baloyi had been invited to give a talk on the significance of Human Rights Day.
She said March 21 1960, when apartheid’s guns mowed down 69 people in 1960 in Sharpeville, was a turning point in South Africa’s struggle for freedom.
”For the first time we became an agenda for the international community,” Baloyi said, referring to the demonstrations that were staged throughout the world and the condemnation of the killings by the United Nations. ”We must move on, but we must never forget. If we forget, this will happen again. You know how power corrupts and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you do wrong, you are trampling on your rights; when you drink and drive, when you do drugs.”
”Let’s us not make the mistake of thinking that the wheel has turned. It has not,” she concluded to polite applause.
The inertia that had descended on the church wafted away when a zesty Kelley strolled up to the pulpit, and, grabbing a microphone from the master of ceremony, broke into a bluesy ballad.
”The Lord knows I have some lonely nights,” he crooned in a deep voice, swaying sideways, a song that was taken up by the guitarists and other musicians. ”I won’t complain because the Lord has been good to me — I won’t complain. I just want to say thank you Lord.”
The effect of Kelley’s singing was akin to lighting a bonfire; most people stood up, arms aloft and sang along.
After his song Kelley began preaching about Moses and instantly I was transported back to high school, poring over Baldwin’s texts. He wrote in Notes of A Native Son how the Old Testament was especially loved in the churches in Harlem. A modern incarnation of this phenomenon is the Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago, a house of worship steeped in liberation theology: the doctrine of the liberation of black people. For many years the church was led by US President Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Of these churches that are housed in ”lofts, basements [and] store fronts,” Baldwin wrote that ”it is the Old Testament that is clung to and most frequently preached from, which provides the emotional fire and anatomises the path of bondage; and which promises vengeance and assures the chosen of their place in Zion.”
The Negro who went to one of these churches saw himself as the equivalent of the exiled, suffering Jew, ”in bondage to a hard taskmaster and waiting for a Moses to lead him out of Egypt.”
It was the same Moses that Kelley preached about. ”The people complained against Moses when they found themselves in the wilderness and faced with the Red Sea.” In accented tones, Kelley said that when one is faced with the Red Seas of life ”don’t expect God to build a bridge because anyone can do that. Expect God to open up the sea. Look at what God can do.”
Drawing on the significance of March 21 1960, a day in which a people in bondage faced the muzzles of the guns of the oppressor, Kelley said that the people who died then ”didn’t just die for that day”. Their deaths had a meaning that arched into a future that was barely visible then.
Then, taking a dig against materialism, Kelley (who was trained as a banker) advised his flock not to ”focus on what God has given them. Instead focus on what he means to you. That’s where the real nourishment is.”
At this point I turned to look at the congregation. It was mostly young and this was apparent in their diverse dress styles, both formal and informal. Seated in front of me was a light-skinned, tall and stately girl with a Mohican that was dyed a peroxide blonde. Others were in dreadlocks, Afro-themed clothing. For a church vividly aware of its African heritage there was an awkward moment when Kelley quipped: ”Stop hanging around dark people”. When muffled murmurs rippled among the faithful, Kelley reiterated: ”You heard me right”. It was not literal, of course; he meant people with dark intentions.
Later, when the service was finished, I spoke to some of the congregants. Pearl Thusi, model and actor, said she has just joined the church.
”I came as a visitor and haven’t stopped coming since,” Thusi said. ”She doesn’t find being a model a distraction from her faith. ”Being a model is just work. I was given this body by God. I don’t have to have sex with anybody.”
Another young congregant, Pumla Radebe, a junior producer at e.tv, said the church ”is like a family. If you want to talk to the pastor he is accessible”.
Afterwards, when most of the congregation had left, I asked Kelley whether his church was the church of choice for Americans living in Johannesburg. ”Yes,” he said, ”those Americans who want an African praise experience.”
His church seems to be popular with young people, I pointed out. ”We have a message of hope for young people. It’s a message that helps them with the issues they face.”
He explained that his church caters to the ”contextual realities of God’s people.” For instance, he said HIV/Aids are not conditions of shame and blame. ”You don’t have to die from Aids. You can live with it” through a proper diet and medication.
On gays and lesbian, Kelley pronounced, ”we are fundamentalist. We respect them because they are God’s children. But we pronounce the belief that man was meant to be in union with woman for the purposes of procreation.”
Before our interview came to a close, Kelley had a word for the politicians, in terms that suggested the separation of the state from the church. ”The church is not meant to deliver votes to the politicians. We are a balancing agent. We have to disagree with the politicians when decisions and laws they make are counter to God’s interests from a moral perspective”.
In many ways the service at My Father’s House was like being in Harlem: the jazzy ambience, the Old Testament motif and the quietly ecstatic crowd, face up turned expectantly, awaiting a Moses to take them out of a brutal Egypt, straight to the promised land.